Posts Tagged ‘Youngman Lotus’

One thing you can say about Victor Muller: he doesn’t give up easily. “I am persistent,” says the Dutch entrepreneur as he catches his breath between interviews and meetings at the Geneva Motor Show.

Many thought Muller might call it quits on the auto industry after his effort to save the Swedish carmaker Saab collapsed in the waning days of 2011. At the time, it looked like he would also be forced to sell the tiny sports car company he had launched a decade earlier.

But while Saab collapsed – an issue that Muller continues to deal with in a $3 billion lawsuit he has filed against the maker’s former owner, General Motors – he wound up keeping Spyker and now hopes to bring it back to life with the introduction of the new B6 Venator. A concept version is on display at Geneva’s PALExpo convention center and generating a fair amount of interest.

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The B6 is a compact, mid-engine sports car that picks up on some of the aerospace-influenced design cues of earlier, often outlandish Spyker models, such as the Aileron. That includes not just its propeller logo but an aircraft-like canopy that sweeps rearward to reduce drag, LED taillights that are designed to look like the afterburners of a fighter jet, and turbofan-style wheels. The aero theme carries over into the interior, where there’s an airplane-style ignition switch, a turned aluminum dash and jet-like gauges.

Another day, another desperate attempt by Saab owner Swedish Automobile to save the tiny Swedish automaker.

Swedish Automobile CEO Victor Muller told Reuters that it would have to go back to the drawing board after General Motors rejected its proposed rescue plan where it would be sold to Chinese investors Pang Da and Youngman Lotus.

Court-appointed administrator Guy Lofalk told Reuters that GM’s decision may just be one bump in the road as negotiators try to find a solution to save the automaker.

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GM owns preference shares of Saab and supplies the automaker with powertrains as well as the Saab 9-4x crossover that it builds alongside the Cadillac SRX in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico. The automaker offered to continue to supply Saab if the company paid $500 million to the Detroit automaker.

“I had warned the Chinese that GM would have a mega problem with any other deal other than the original 54 percent stake in Swedish Automobile. Unfortunately, I was right,” Muller told Automotive News. Muller engineered the purchase of Saab from GM in 2009 and remains an investor in Swedish Automobile.